Joseph Krol wrote:When I was playing the duel today my connection was lost a couple of times. However, when I reconnected, it said that I had blanked the rounds even though I had not seen the full selection, instead of just resetting to the start of the roud like normal. This may be a duel only thing, I don't know, but I feel a bit hard done by (especially as it will determine my seeding in the Tiny Tots Tourney and lost me a useful 13 points).

Joseph Krol wrote:When I was playing the duel today my connection was lost a couple of times. However, when I reconnected, it said that I had blanked the rounds even though I had not seen the full selection, instead of just resetting to the start of the roud like normal. This may be a duel only thing, I don't know, but I feel a bit hard done by (especially as it will determine my seeding in the Tiny Tots Tourney and lost me a useful 13 points).

Thanks for reminding me.

"Thanks for reminding me,"? Did it happen to you as well?

One Direction are my life. <3
"The reason for life is to find out who you are"
"It always seems impossible until it's done"
Love loads of celebs to be honest... Might marry Nicky Maccy

Ryan Taylor wrote:Also along the similar lines. On a conundrum in a standard 15, if you don't solve it you can logout and then log back in and the conundrum will be reset so you get a different one. So if you are on 14/14 maxes against Prune you can just keep refreshing until you get a conundrum you want. I'm pretty sure this is the case anyway and will try it out now.

Edit: So yeah on a conundrum you can either refresh to get a conundrum you want and even once you've typed in an invalid guess you can still refresh it. How come this round doesn't get blanked like in duels?

Why are you singling out the conundrum? Isn't it the same in all rounds? Obviously in a letters game you don't know what the max score will be, but most numbers are solvable and you can just log out if you can't solve one.

Gavin Chipper wrote:
Why are you singling out the conundrum? Isn't it the same in all rounds? Obviously in a letters game you don't know what the max score will be, but most numbers are solvable and you can just log out if you can't solve one.

It's not ideal, but I figured it was worth trading off the potential dishonesty of a small number of people for the general happiness and sanity of everyone else.

Gavin Chipper wrote:
Why are you singling out the conundrum? Isn't it the same in all rounds? Obviously in a letters game you don't know what the max score will be, but most numbers are solvable and you can just log out if you can't solve one.

It's not ideal, but I figured it was worth trading off the potential dishonesty of a small number of people for the general happiness and sanity of everyone else.

I completed today's Duel, finishing the last round, however, it's not coming up in the chat logs, and I can't see any results on the front leaderboard and it's not on my profile showing completion, I went back in to check if there was any more rounds, but no challenges were showing.

James Hall wrote:taken from the front page moments ago: "Mark Tournoff commented on Catriona Cappleman's game with her." Are there still some issues here or has Mark just decided to self-identify as female?

Yeah pointed this out a while back, it takes the gender from the second player instead of the first.

Been plugging away at the Ascension in the last couple of weeks, in an attempt to improve my piss-poor conundrum skills. It was my understanding that the height of Mount Conundrum was determined by the number of conundrums used in Apterous, and that during the Ascension each one would be shown. I'd suspected that I'd been getting duplicates for a while, but couldn't be bothered to rootle around to check. Then I got the same word in successive games, here and here. Is my understanding wrong, or is there a problem?

Stuart Arnot wrote:Been plugging away at the Ascension in the last couple of weeks, in an attempt to improve my piss-poor conundrum skills. It was my understanding that the height of Mount Conundrum was determined by the number of conundrums used in Apterous, and that during the Ascension each one would be shown. I'd suspected that I'd been getting duplicates for a while, but couldn't be bothered to rootle around to check. Then I got the same word in successive games, here and here. Is my understanding wrong, or is there a problem?

I've noticed this myself, haven't yet gotten to the bottom of it. For the record you've only had 12 dupes so it doesn't make any significant difference to the height, but it would be nice to fix. Oddly enough almost all of your dupes occurred in this game, which I would imagine is no coincidence.

In aegilops I offered an 8 and I had another 8 written down and it said "xxxxxx is fine but you could have gone for yyyyyy for 8 though, unlucky" or something like that even though both were the same length.

Kirk Bevins wrote:In aegilops I offered an 8 and I had another 8 written down and it said "xxxxxx is fine but you could have gone for yyyyyy for 8 though, unlucky" or something like that even though both were the same length.

I played a Bullet Hypernumbers Attack recently, and managed to get a target that Apterous's solver wasn't able to get in 3 seconds. It doesn't count a perfect solve that the game can't get as a max though -- it is possible to change the code so a perfect numbers solve is counted as a max even if the solver can't find it in time?

Ben Wilson wrote:Just did a conundrum marathon which resulted in a bit of strange behaviour from the conundrum generator.

This is apparently a valid word actually -- it's a Yiddish term for an object of little value, like a trinket or bagatelle -- or a "pretty woman" (I'll hold my tongue). Now, why on earth it's a 2/10 on the difficulty scale is more baffling, and if I saw it as an actual conundrum on the show (it could happen given the recent trajectory of conundrum words) I'd punt my TV

Assuming that something bugged out in the client? That was a pretty easy round, with 50 sec. to boot.

Also damnit Charlie you wiping the player vs. bot games killed a 1,000 round numbers attack I was 260 rounds in at almost 10% maxes above my current average
I mean, I know that lag and all and that helps, but still

Steve Balog wrote:
Also damnit Charlie you wiping the player vs. bot games killed a 1,000 round numbers attack I was 260 rounds in at almost 10% maxes above my current average
I mean, I know that lag and all and that helps, but still

Steve Balog wrote:
Also damnit Charlie you wiping the player vs. bot games killed a 1,000 round numbers attack I was 260 rounds in at almost 10% maxes above my current average
I mean, I know that lag and all and that helps, but still

Huh, someone told me that when the lag is too much games vs. bots that started X time ago get wiped. I was also told sometimes games just disappear. I knew it wasn't you intentionally.

Figured the three smileys would be enough to suggest I wasn't being wholly serious with the post, but eh. Think I'll just stick to regular nums attacks from now on. Or, at least now on until I have that crazy idea again and actually have the free time to finish it in 48 hours or so.

Steve Balog wrote:Figured the three smileys would be enough to suggest I wasn't being wholly serious with the post, but eh.

The first bit was serious, so I thought I should respond to it.

Ryan Taylor wrote:I've always thought of lag as a phenomenon a bit like a kick in snooker. Or am I wrong and you know exactly what causes it?[/url]
It's basically caused by lack of bandwidth, nothing more mysterious than that. There's nothing much I can do about it unless we moved to a dedicated server and started charging £15 a month instead of £15 a year.

I'm not suggesting that this happened to you but sometimes I've worked through a solution and sort of "mentally completed it" while I'm still pressing the last couple of buttons and then pressed something wrongly without noticing and been surprised to find myself without the points.

What I posted in chat, was that when you have to intervene to reset apterous, for example because there's been a period of unbearable lag, it sometimes (but not always) has the effect of losing all uncompleted games.

I probably didn't explain clearly enough at the time, so apologies to Steve and Charlie if I gave the impression that games are deliberately wiped.

Dunno if this counts as a bug or not but on my user page it has the comment "Innis Carson tied the high score for Aegilops Numbers Attack with a score of 200. 22 hours ago." It was a game I was in, but all the other things on my page are about me. It also came up twice on the main feed when it happened.

(It wasn't a real record anyway, as it was a sudden death conundrum, but this feature is well known about.)

Kirk Bevins wrote:I think it's about time the rules for unlimited were changed, or at least remove the "aegilops" rules from the rules page on unlimited. Yet again for a duel I've clicked on rules, realise I have to find a 9 letter word then fail to find it. Then the answer tells me it was just a 7 and I've lost ten easy points. I then notice it says "aegilops" for the rules. Frustrating.

I'm not really sure what this is about but, since a few people have now reported a similar thing, I assume it must be more than user error. For me, when I look on the rules tab for Unlimited, I see the rules for Unlimited. If anyone recreates this problem or anything else where it shows you the wrong rules, please send me your console contents (instructions) right away and I'll see if I can get to the bottom of it.

The Rules tab in today's Junior Unlimited duel gives rules for Aegilops. I'm sure I've seen this problem before as well, but I normally only play the variants when they come up in the duel. Perhaps it only happens in duel games?

Firefox doesn't seem to have an option to view the Java Console (at least not in Linux) but I can provide a screenshot if necessary, and the "error tracker" window is empty.

For vital and important reasons of immature humour I wanted to find the game from ages ago where my opponent had STAINED and I had PANTIES. When I searched for STAINED and PANTIES in Lexplorer to get it to show me games where they'd been offered, the list of games it returned didn't go back far enough, presumably because they're offered quite often and there's a limit to the number of results the query brings back.

That's not the bug, though. I thought "aha, I remember STAINED and PANTIES were both maxes, so DC would also have offered PEDANTS" so I searched for that. I couldn't find it in that list, so I found it by trial and error instead. However, the results for PEDANTS included games before and after the one I wanted. Should this round not show up when you do a word search for PEDANTS?

Graeme Cole wrote:For vital and important reasons of immature humour I wanted to find the game from ages ago where my opponent had STAINED and I had PANTIES. When I searched for STAINED and PANTIES in Lexplorer to get it to show me games where they'd been offered, the list of games it returned didn't go back far enough, presumably because they're offered quite often and there's a limit to the number of results the query brings back.

That's not the bug, though. I thought "aha, I remember STAINED and PANTIES were both maxes, so DC would also have offered PEDANTS" so I searched for that. I couldn't find it in that list, so I found it by trial and error instead. However, the results for PEDANTS included games before and after the one I wanted. Should this round not show up when you do a word search for PEDANTS?

I believe that the count of dictionary corner spots and the count of player spots are independently done when deciding which games to list. All the games prior to your game's date on that list are player spots. So probably not a bug.
Have I just fallen for an elaborate "pedantic" joke?

I think Charlie said that the slipper-counting was broken for a while sometime in the distant past, which is why nobody could figure out what a pair of slippers was actually for (although of course, we know now).

I think Charlie said that the slipper-counting was broken for a while sometime in the distant past, which is why nobody could figure out what a pair of slippers was actually for (although of course, we know now).

I know it's been broken for at least as long as I've been on apterous (March 2009) except they also seem to have ceased being given out now too, albeit that they were being given out wrongly when they were still being given out. I think, that's largely all speculation cos I don't think Charlie ever told me what they mean - I speculated the obvious ("when you don't declare anything in a round") but he said that wasn't right. So what is it Jim? Or rather, what, when working properly, was it supposed to be?

I think Charlie said that the slipper-counting was broken for a while sometime in the distant past, which is why nobody could figure out what a pair of slippers was actually for (although of course, we know now).

I know it's been broken for at least as long as I've been on apterous (March 2009) except they also seem to have ceased being given out now too, albeit that they were being given out wrongly when they were still being given out. I think, that's largely all speculation cos I don't think Charlie ever told me what they mean - I speculated the obvious ("when you don't declare anything in a round") but he said that wasn't right. So what is it Jim? Or rather, what, when working properly, was it supposed to be?

Isn't it meant to be one for your first game, one for your tenth, one for your hundredth and so on? I'm sure it says somewhere, as I'd never have worked it out for myself.

For reasons that are too long and unexciting to go into right now, I downloaded Google Chrome last night to give it a try. Everything apterousy works fine but I've just noticed that on Game Of The Week voting page, all the player names seem to have disappeared. So the first game is "0-127" instead of "Apterous Prune 0-127 Josh Hurst", the second is "0-147" instead of "Apterous Prune 0 - 147 Adam Gillard" and so on (you can still see who is in the game by clicking the number of one of the rounds). No big deal really, but I wondered if it was the same for other Chrome people or just me (given that the computer I'm on now is very old and crap)?